Overview

Crisis has enveloped the more than 200,000 nationally and regionally protected natural and cultural heritage sites around the world. Heritage managers – those who manage natural sites such as national parks, wilderness areas, and biosphere reserves, as well as those who manage cultural sites including historic monuments, battlefields, heritage cities, and ancient rock art sites – face an urgent need to confront this crisis, and each day that they don't, more of our planet's common heritage disappears. Although heritage management and implementation suffer from a lack of money, time, personnel, information, and political will, The Future Has Other Plans argues that deeper causes to current problems lurk in the discipline itself. Drawing on decades of practical experience in global heritage management and case studies from around the world, Jon Kohl and Steve McCool provide an innovative solution for conserving these valuable protected areas. Merging interdisciplinary and evolving management paradigms, the authors introduce a new kind of holistic planning approach that integrates the practice of heritage management and conservation with operational realities.

Reviews

"Readers who turn these pages will discover a new and compelling real-world view of planning - a view that treats planning as a continuous, facilitated conversation among heritage area community members. In this planning model the temporary action plan produced at the outset merely marks the beginning of a continuous decision-making process that lives on indefinitely - forever." —Sam H. Ham, PhD, Professor Emeritus, Communication Psychology and Conservation Social Sciences, University of Idaho

"In The Future has Other Plans, the authors demonstrate how contemporary planners need to work within legal and planning frameworks that were developed in an era when we believed the future could be predicted while in an era when we have come to realize that the future is highly uncertain and dynamic. First, they illustrate the assumptions that underpin the two eras. Then they help the reader understand their personal mental models about how change can be influenced. They conclude by merging the two together which provided an excellent basis to both critique and creativity develop planning projects. Through numerous case studies and clear explanations, complexity is something that becomes welcomed rather than feared, and the evolution of our understanding of planning for protected areas grows immensely. This book was well received by my upper division undergraduate students and graduate students alike." —Wayne Freimund PhD, Professor and Chair, Department of Parks, Recreation and Tourism Management, Clemson University

Author Biography

Jon Kohl is coordinator and founder of the PUP Global Heritage Consortium , a non-profit global network dedicated to introducing emerging paradigms into the heritage management and planning field to stem the crisis of unimplemented management plans. He launched the Public Use Planning Process while working at RARE Center for Tropical Conservation in Honduras. Steve McCool is Professor Emeritus, Wildland Recreation Management, the Department of Society and Conservation of the College of Forestry and Conservation, University of Montana, and Associate, Center for Protected Area Management, Colorado State University. He is a member of the World Commission on Protected Areas and currently serves on its Tourism and Protected Areas Specialist Group.